An attempt to pull sense from the chaos of language

Tag Archives: science

This morning, I came across a wonderful series of blog posts on the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens over at Dana Hunter’s Rosetta Stones blog. Her enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious, and sent me right back to my own childhood fascination with the event. I remember my family going to the interpretive centre thereabouts of 1990 and my awe at the incomprehensible devastation still rawly evident on the landscape. For a while, vulcanology and plate tectonics joined my abiding interest in paleontology, faltering only when I exhausted the supply of kid-friendly geology books in the local library. I still get giddy at the sight of folded mountain strata; it’s one of the reasons I miss living in the midst of a mountain range.

My excitement in reading those blog posts carried with it some anger.

As a small child, I had a deep and abiding interest in science. It started and stopped at the library. While my parents never actually discouraged me, it never went beyond that. Continue reading →